How Scotland can avoid the cuts
Vote for Scotland's serious and principled socialist party
For over 10 years the SSP has promoted a wealth redistribution tax, the Scottish Service Tax, to replace the grossly unfair Tory Council Tax.
When the SSP introduced bills into the Scottish Parliament from 1999 - 2007 to bring in the tax, mainstream politicians threw up their hands in horror.
The rich will leave the country, they bleated.
People like Fred Goodwin and the other directors of HBOS and RBS would be packing their Mercs and speeding south down the A1 to avoid the tax.
Now we know that the alchemists of high finance were turning gold into dust and we had to pick up the bill.
The politicians and economists tell us we are all going to have to make sacrifices - to pay for the mess they made.
If that’s the case, then let the biggest sacrifices be made by those who can afford it.
Every one of the mainstream political parties says that we must pay for the crisis caused by the bankers with public spending cuts, redundancies and wage cuts.
None have dared suggest that the solution to the crisis lies in raising revenues rather than slashing spending.
Now the Scottish Socialist Party can reveal new figures that show how Scotland could avoid axing services, slashing jobs and cutting pay.
Our research – verified by accountants and economists – shows that by replacing the Council Tax with a new income-based Scottish Service Tax, with a sliding scale of payments based on income, the Scottish Government could raise an additional £1.5 billion a year.
The Scottish Service Tax would redress the scandal of fatcats on sky-high salaries paying a pittance towards our services, while low paid workers fork out a sizeable chunk of their income.
But most important of all, because of rising incomes at the top, the Scottish Service Tax now has the potential to turn the Scottish budget deficit into a spectacular surplus.
